I may give up job as Community Manager to become a Travel Agent. I received more email yesterday about changing people’s hotel and flight reservations than I did normal email. –Dooley

Top News StoriesCould App Store Boost SharePoint Benefits? (ITBusinessEdge)
I’ve written several times about enterprise app stores, noting their potential to end “stealth” application purchases by business users, considering some of the features enterprise app stores could borrow from popular consumer app stores, and spotlighting a trend of enterprise app stores based on application type. A few weeks ago I interviewed Sam Liu, VP of marketing for Partnerpedia, a provider of private label marketplace and enterprise app store solutions, about the growing popularity of enterprise app stores.

Social Business – Why Collaboration Matters (CMSWire)
Every business wants to improve collaboration; after all who doesn’t want employees to work together in smarter, more effective ways to help achieve company goals? When you launch a social business initiative, however, saying you want to improve collaboration won’t cut it. Improving collaboration in itself is not typically a company goal. You need to ask yourself, What is the outcome we need to achieve?

Salesforce.com: Understanding the ‘Social Enterprise’, Part 1 (ZDNet)
Approximately 45,000 people registered for salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference, held in San Francisco two weeks ago, making it the largest enterprise software conference in the world. The event’s size draws attention to the growing importance of cloud computing and highlights Salesforce as an important participant in the enterprise software ecosystem.

Developers Take Issue with Microsoft Cutting Plug-in Support in Metro IE10 (InfoWorld)
In a move reminiscent of Apple’s notorious dissing of Adobe Flash, Microsoft has announced that the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10 that comes with Windows 8 will not support plug-ins of any kind. Rather, Microsoft is betting that HTML5 can do the work necessary to deliver, say, Flash content to Web users.

Windows Server 8: Built for the Cloud, Built for Virtualization (Ars Technica)
Where Windows 8 is an operating system built for the tablet, Windows Server 8 is an operating system built for the cloud. Not the Windows Azure public cloud; rather, it’s built for “private clouds”: on-premises, virtualized deployments with tens or hundreds of virtual machines. This kind of large scale administration requires a new approach to system management. That approach centers around PowerShell and Server Manager, the new Metro-style management console. Server Manager provides a convenient GUI, but behind the scenes, PowerShell commands are constructed and executed. The commands can also be copied, edited, and executed directly in PowerShell. This should sound familiar to many Windows administrators, as Exchange already uses this style of management, with the GUI being a mere layer over PowerShell.

BUILD: Microsoft Updates Windows Azure Tools and Services (RedmondDeveloperNews)
Microsoft released the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 on Wednesday, after highlighting Windows Azure advances designed to support Metro style apps during its BUILD conference. The toolkit is designed to help developers build cloud-based services for Windows 8 Metro-style apps. The code to support the certification of IDs from multiple identity providers is included in the toolkit, according to John Shewchuk, a Microsoft technical fellow, who talked about the advances during the Day 2 keynote.

Why Windows 8 Isn’t an iOS Copycat (CNET)
This week saw the latest step towards the release of Windows 8, the next major version of Microsoft’s operating system that represents one of the biggest changes in the history of the platform. At its Build conference on Tuesday, Microsoft spent more than two hours on stage detailing its next OS. While the software isn’t expected to make it into consumer hands until sometime next year, we now have a clearer picture of how Microsoft is positioning it to an industry that’s shifted its purchases (and affections) from desktops to notebooks, and now portable devices like tablets and smartphones.

Ballmer Upbeat to Analysts on Windows Phone Prospects (NetworkWorld)
Microsoft’s mobile platform, Windows Phone 7, will become successful “with a little bit more effort, a little bit more energy,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts at the company’s annual meeting with them this week. But what Ballmer laid out shows much more than a “little bit” being invested.
Microsoft released the Windows Phone operating system 10 months ago on a clutch of new phones from HTC, LG, Samsung and others. Though reviews and user experience studies cited by Microsoft were generally favorable, strong sales failed to follow.

Around the BlogosphereCommon Error: The Site is Not Valid. The ‘Pages’ Document Library is Missing. (Stefan Goßner)
In the past I had a couple of cases where users received the following error message: “The site is not valid. The ‘Pages’ document library is missing. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.InvalidPublishingWebException: The site is not valid. The ‘Pages’ document library is missing.” The interesting piece here is that the Pages library indeed existed but could not be found.

Customizing ListItem Forms Using RenderingTemplates (SharePointDevWiki)
I guess, you all know the Tags and Notes functionality of SharePoint 2010 by now. On the My Profile page you can see all your social comments (the tags and notes) you have given on the pages as well as the possibility to leave a note. This Note Board is actually a Web Part (SocialCommentWebPart).

Usability Issues in SharePoint 2010 My Sites: Social Design Patterns and Standards (EndUserSharePoint)
In the first article in this series on SharePoint 2010 My Sites, you learned about several usability issues in SharePoint 2010 My Sites. The original idea of this series was to interview real users to discover the pain points for analysis of My Sites’ usability. One of the users that volunteered to provide feedback was Chris Poteet , a UX Lead with insightful views on the usability of My Sites. I invited him to join in the analysis and he provided the backbone for this article.

Why it’s a POST Implementation Review (AIIM)
When I was taking AIIM’s ECM Master Class, I almost snickered when Bob Larriviee started talking about the Post-Implementation Review. As Bob had walked us through the ECM planning process, I observed that in many ways, it mirrored a Systems Development Life Cycle diagram. Systems development management techniques almost always suggest PIRs, but in my experience, they are rarely conducted. One of the reasons PIRs are often skipped is because the project team has moved on. Ideally, the PIR would be conducted by a different team, but those resources are often hard to assemble. Having just completed a PIR of an important ECM project, I am reminded as to why you need to wait to have this review.

Windows 8 – Thoughts (WinSmarts)
With Microsoft having unveiled Windows 8 finally, and reality setting in, I wanted to share my first impressions about Windows 8 and the general direction of Microsoft and technology in general. Back in 2006 at the AjaxWorld 2006 conference, I was on a panel where I had predicted what Microsoft just did. Quoting my exact words, “I anticipate Microsoft making more objects than just AJAX available for consumption in a secure way through a JavaScript based API”.

SharePoint Job Listings*SharePoint 2007/2010 Developer – Subject Matter Expert – Telecommute
International Knowledge Management (www.ikmnet.com) is currently seeking Subject Matter Experts to serve as authors and reviewers to create a web-based assessment test for SharePoint Developers. These are part-time, contract, telecommuting positions where you work from home. Our authors and reviewers typically work at night or on weekends over a 6-8 week period to prepare an assessment that, on average, consists of a pool of 150 questions. All work is done in an online tool, which is accessed through the company’s website. Authors write original test questions and reviewers validate these for technical correctness. Some creative thinking and creative writing involved. Compensation is based upon the number of questions developed. Please contact Craig with a resume if you are interested at csernotti@ikmnet.com.

C#.NET Principle Software Developer – Princeton, NJ
I’m looking for a Sr. (12-15 years IT) C#.NET Developer with expertise on server side development. This is a pure backend position. I am not looking for a Website/UI developer. Must have strong C#.NET, OOD/OOP, J2EE, real-time programming and experience with messaging systems. Experience with HTTP, TCP/IP, Webservices, XML/SOAP on SQL or MYSQL databases is needed. This is a heavy server side, high transaction back-end development project. Contact Kaitlyn Elfreth at kaitlyn.elfreth@pointblank.us.com for more details.

Microsoft UpdatesUsing SharePoint Online for Enterprises (TechNet)
SharePoint is the established enterprise collaboration platform and now, with SharePoint Online (included in Office 365), the same capabilities can be extended off-premises, opening up new communication channels.